Echoes
by Finnigan Geist
Summary: Five years later.


**Summary**: Five years later.  
**Notes**: No spoilers per se, but you really probably shouldn't read if you haven't seen the final story arc. D:

* * *

They were never together again after they parted at the crossroads, but they were never separate.

I.

Five years later, Fuu stands on a hill by a river. She has always had a bit of wandering in her heart, no matter where she was or what she was doing. Her restlessness makes it almost impossible for her to find a well-paying job and comfortable home. She waitresses, again, still, and it amuses her that wherever she is, she serves food and brings drinks to grumpy men. She's become more graceful over time -- she trips and spills a tray of food maybe once a week these days.

She lives in a small room with a poor family in need of extra funds. Flowers line her window sill, not always sunflowers, bright, pretty reminders of her life and lives that used to be. A stray, mangy dog follows her around, and she coddles it and feeds it scraps despite warnings that it will never go away. Animals are still drawn to the innocence she hasn't lost and never fully will. Some days she's quiet enough to sit and listen to the wind push chimes with gentle fingers.

The hatred she had for her father vanished in a day, leaving an empty spot in her soul. She used to poke at it as one would a sore, but she's learning to fill it with pieces of contentment. She thinks about settling down, that maybe someday it won't be so bad to be permanent in a person's life. In her imagination, she fills her future home with sunlight and peonies, and a husband who's an odd mixture of silent dignity and wild, joyful spite.

II.

Mugen still cheats people, robs indiscriminately, and fights whoever looks at him sideways. In another three years, he'll be dead, but now he walks a long road on a journey to nowhere, healthy and content, in his way. His heart has always wandered, straining to be where he was not, so he travels everywhere in search of a place of peace. His roads always seem to lead him to the ocean. Watching the waves stills him sometimes, briefly, before he turns and continues to something new.

He remembers them sometimes, always. He battles a fighter with a gaze as narrow as his sword, whose composure and fluidity remind him of someone else, and his soul is very quiet while they clash. He can't bring himself to insult the man as he would anyone else, somehow. As he explodes in a fury of limbs and sword, using the limits of his capabilities, he thinks he might be happy. The man's head comes off in a final clean sweep, and Mugen obverses the passing with a moment of silence before turning and kicking dust onto the corpse.

In a brothel, he sees a girl with light brown hair and scrawny ankles. He almost cries out to her, a condemnation and _hey, stupid, how did you get yourself into this again_? but when she turns it isn't the right girl. He drinks silently, moodily, and throws sake in the face of a woman who comes on too strong.

When he's thrown out, he steals money from a newly-married young man and spends it all on dumplings. He stares at the stars and hums Ryuukyu lullabies he barely remembers.

III.

Jin has killed most of the men from the dojo. He's still not sure how many are out there still looking for him and how many have given up. He's forgotten most of their names and faces, though he thought he would always remember every detail of that place, each chip in the wood, each creaking floorboard, the way it was the moment he left.

His heart has always yearned to find its home, but wandered with him as he searched for. He found something like it with them, at the end. There was comfort in his psychotic energy and in her smile. The parting only made him realize how much of himself would go with them, how he could have drifted forever by their sides. Home wasn't a destination after all, but people who carried you in their souls.

He stood on the grey, misty banks of a river and waited for another woman with a piece of him. When she came to him, he smiled and pulled at a piece of her hair, then kissed her forehead.

He lays behind her now, his breath on her neck, a hand on her breast. In front of his closed eyes flash vibrant memories of pink and red.

end


End file.
